It’s a new year with new challenges and new opportunities. Your cooperative is working hard to keep the lights on and keep our members safe. This isn’t limited to just hanging high voltage signs and making sure our trucks are visible—it’s protecting your data, too.

Cybersecurity is something that wasn’t worried about much a decade ago, but it is one of the fastest growing and most serious issues facing the cooperative today. This month will kick off a series of penetration tests of the cooperative’s infrastructure to determine where our cybersecurity is strongest and where it needs to be improved.

Many people don’t think of themselves as “big enough” to be threatened by cybercriminals, but the days of targeted attacks are over. Most hacking isn’t a bad actor directly trying to get access to a specific target. Instead, they throw a large net and take the path of least resistance. A hacker will get a list of frequent passwords and email addresses and run a program to try and get into those email accounts. The ones with weak passwords are the ones that get broken into, and their contacts are then added to a hacker’s list. Strong passwords and duo authentication are simple ways to increase the difficulty of compromising your accounts. It’s not a matter of becoming impervious, but to be difficult enough they move on to other targets.

Don’t forget to be on the lookout for your member number in the center section of this magazine. There are three member numbers hidden in Clay Electric News. If you find your number and give us a call, you win $5 off your next bill!